"If Bird Was Alive, This Would Kill Him"

"Davis needed one more thing before he could go this route: a pianist who knew how to accompany without playing chords. This was a radical notion. Laying down the chords—supplying the frontline horn players with the compass that kept their improvisations on the right path—was what modern jazz pianists did. Russell recommended someone he'd hired for a few of his own sessions, an intense young white man named Bill Evans."

Fred Kaplan in Slate recalls Miles Davis's Kind of Blue on the album's fiftieth anniversary.